I’ve been getting a little bold about wearing progressively scratchier wools against my skin, over just tank tops. That - combined with over-petting my black cat while working from home - has given me a bit of a temporary (I hope) sensitive skin. I don’t tend to make a lot of smooth pure merino sweaters as I’m not keen on the pilling, and I like the halo on the more rustic fibres, so I realized I had no sweaters I could wear until my skin calmed down.

As a result I went hunting through my stash for smooth, gentle yarns, like this one, and decided I will make a few sweaters like these.

I am quite pleased with the outcome on this one. This is thanks to extra effort in the swatching phase. I made sure I didn’t stop swatching until I had tested all the unknowns, had achieved the motif in my mind’s eye, and had adjusted the ridges of texture to fall at exactly the right positions across the bust span. I also took extra time with the blocking and instead of rushing through it as usual, and considering it something to just get over with, I took my time. I adjusted all the wires and pins until all the critical dimensions like side-seam length, cross-back, bust girth, and sleeve length matched my schematic. This was crucial since blocking a superwash can reallllly stretch it out unless you explicitly pick the dimension you will stretch it to.

Also adding more time, I ripped out and re-knit the bottom ribbing after determining the ribbing was too messy. Second time around I changed 2 things, that I will probably remember to do more frequently: (1) I wound a new skein to knit the ribbing, since I had been knitting from yarn that was caked for years and had become kinky. I re-skeined and relaxed the kinky cake. (2) I switched from knitting in the round to knitting back and forth. I am finding more and more that the fabric is neater and less biased when I knit stockinette flat. I also quite like that rigid side seam when I’m actually wearing the sweater and moving around. The sweater moves with me better, rather than stretching in odd places and twisting around the body. For the 1x1 ribbing in particular, despite using eastern stitch mount in both cases, knitting flat over less sts per row (vs. twice as much for a round) made much neater ribbing.

Other minor learnings: Mattress stitching the shoulder was a bad idea. It added too much bulk. I should have done the 3 needle bind-off to join the shoulder seams, as I used to do, for less bulk and just enough stretch.

Next time I might try moving the sleeve cap towards the front armhole as with the sewn knit tops.

The yarn was extremely nice to work with. Maybe I just forgot how mice merino is:)